The term musical form refers to the overall structure or plan of a piece of music, and it describes the layout of a composition as divided into sections. In the tenth edition of The Oxford Companion to Music, Percy Scholes defines musical form as "a series of strategies designed to find a successful mean between the opposite extremes of unrelieved repetition and unrelieved alteration."
Musicologist Richard Middleton describes form through repetition and difference: difference is the distance moved from a repeat; a repeat being the smallest difference. Difference is quantitative and qualitative; how far different and what type of difference. According to Middleton, musical form is "the shape or structure of the work." In many cases, form depends on statement and restatement, unity and variety, contrast and connection.
Read more about Musical Form: Levels of Organization, Single Forms, Cyclical Forms, More Recent Developments
Famous quotes containing the words musical and/or form:
“Fifty million Frenchmen can’t be wrong.”
—Anonymous. Popular saying.
Dating from World War I—when it was used by U.S. soldiers—or before, the saying was associated with nightclub hostess Texas Quinan in the 1920s. It was the title of a song recorded by Sophie Tucker in 1927, and of a Cole Porter musical in 1929.
“In every form of womanly love something of motherly love also comes to light.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)